Thursday 15 September 2005

Bush To Announce War On Hurricanes
Prime-Time Speech Hints At Ties To Al-Qaeda

In his prime-time, national address scheduled for this evening, President Bush will announce a new 'War On Hurricanes', based on new intelligence chatter, and the devastation in the country's Gulf region two-weeks ago wrought by Hurricane Katrina.

In a draft copy of the speech obtained by The Garlic, the President briefly mentions the horrific federal response to the catastrophe but firmly voices support for the Department of Homeland Security, the agency that oversees FEMA, the center of the controversy over the relief efforts in New Orleans, Louisiana and Mississippi.

The new 'WOH' will be a joint operation, shared between DHS and the U.S. Military.

Citing new intelligence chatter, President Bush called for new action to fighting hurricanes.

"We need to fight these storms where they are, not on American soil."

The President also firmly links the new 'WOH' with the on-going fight against terrorism.

"Some of our enemies may already have access to these weather systems. Some are attempting to purchase them on the Black Market. As we saw on our televisions these past few weeks, a hurricane, clearly, can be a Weapon of Mass Destruction."

The President, in his speech, gives no specifics on how he will wage his 'WOH', or the budget allocation it will need. Aides to the President indicated the he will be meeting in the days ahead with the National Security Council and senior Congressional leaders to lay out the strategy.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield confirmed this new operation.

'Goodness, why wouldn't we want to fight a hurricane? The raw power of one of these things can be awesome but we have more than the appropriate capabilities to deal with them. Not only can we deal with them, we should be dealing with them. Heaven's, I don't want to go through again what I saw last week."

A senior Pentagon official stated that, to-date, no hurricanes have been found in Iraq.

"We have details .. Small units … that are still searching for the WMD's and last week, we added hurricanes to the orders. Nothing has turned up yet."

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice offered brief comments, stating that "Mushroom clouds are not the only clouds we are looking at presently."

In his speech, the President also cautions other countries about the use of hurricanes.

"I expect that our allies will support this new war. It is in all or our best interests to wage a fierce battle, to plant the seeds of calm weather and make our lands safe for all our citizens. We will look warily at any country that harbors hurricanes for use against another country and we will respond to that threat immediately and will use all appropriate measures."

"With the WOH, we have the capability to just take these hurricanes like this and just crush them ... Make them completely irrelevant ..."